Let us take a moment today to solve a small mystery about one of my favorite mystery writers, shall we?

There are certain folks here in BloggyVille whose absence of an uncommon length raises a chill in my soul, a pause in my thought and an investigation of some sort on my part.

Rachel’s been missing for more than a week, I realized again yesterday, checking again her place in this online world where she delivers stories and wisdom and all sorts of things, usually every Monday through Friday.

Yes, the writer of chilling short stories that keep you guessing, the two-parters that make you rush to reading on the second day. The supernatural sniffer who can predict things that will make your hair stand on end. The woman from Florida who’ll write about her personal antics with her sister Michelle now as well and their relationships and…

Where I work we had a White Dove releasing ceremony this morning for National Crime Victims’ Rights Week. The released doves represented and honored the victims we serve. The man who owns the doves told us that when he first began this work, when he saw the baby doves showing signs of hatching, he would often help them by ever so gently cracking open the egg-shell. The next day, those assisted doves died.

What he discovered is a lesson for living–and succeeding in–life.

He said that in order for the baby doves to survive, it’s necessary for them to go through the struggle and the work of pecking away at the egg in order to strengthen their muscles, particularly their neck muscles, to survive once outside the egg.

Thank you, friends, for your kindness and support! I wish you all a wonderful and blessed 2015! ❤ ~Rachel

……….

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 26,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 10 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

I have been following Rachel Carrera’s Blog for nearly as long as I have been writing my own here at WordPress. Rachel is always witty and informative, whether sharing stories about her family (human & feline) and living with autism, interviewing authors, congratulating authors on their birthdays or inventing games her readers can participate in. I love hopping over to her blog to see what she is up to and it is always a pleasure to find one of her posts in my Reader. One day I hope to read one of her novels.

In one of her posts she mentioned that her birthday was on the 22nd of December.

Dear Rachel,

Many Happy Returns! For your birthday I wish you health, happiness & the publication of one of your novels. May you have a wonderful day & a great year ahead.

I’ll dedicate this one to Doobster and Rachel, both of whom are not fans of pumpkin.

Jack ‘O Lanterns

She placed the project on the counter, turning it this way and that. Maybe the stump should be on the bottom this year. Something classic with triangles, or should she go with more detail?

More classic, I think. She used a felt tipped pen to make the triangular eyes and nose, then added a huge crooked grin from one side to another.
She thought about her son and smiled. A quick glance at the clock told her he’d be home from school in about ten more minutes. Four quick strokes of the knife across a honing steel and the edge was ready. She sliced open the top and scooped out the nasty parts.

The wind picked up and the sound of rustling leaves moving toward the door made her smile. She…

I was going to Boston to meet my sister, Sarah, for the very first time. I didn’t know Sarah was my sister until I was eleven years old. She grew up on the West Coast, but went to Boston for college, and I was dying to meet her. Uncle Charlie (who already knew her) offered to go with me, and I was grateful for his company.

Uncle Charlie is just the kind of guy that makes you laugh every time you see him. He has a positive attitude that’s contagious, and he’s not afraid to be silly. Anyway, as Charlie and I boarded the plane, we looked for our seats. Row 16, Seats A and B.

I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed before, but when you get on a plane, the seats do NOT go ABC-DEF. They go FED-CBA. So if you’re standing at the back of the plane, you can read the seat numbers from left to right. At any rate, if you didn’t already know that, don’t feel bad. We didn’t know it either.

Uncle Charlie and I walked right to Row 16 and plopped down on the left side of the aisle. We were happily discussing our trip and how I felt about meeting Sarah when all of a sudden a very Rude Lady scowled as she stood with her hands on her hips and said, “Excuse me! Get up! You’re in my seat!”

Uncle Charlie and I looked at each other then burst out laughing which only made the lady angrier. “No, we’re not,” we replied, then we resumed talking.

She huffed loudly. “Get out of my seat!”

Uncle Charlie and I got a little rambunctious and told her she needed to go to a remedial math class and learn how to count, and we said we’d thank her to stop being so rude.

Well, Mrs. Rudy McRudenheimer (which is what I call rude people) went away, and a few minutes later, she returned with a stewardess (or flight attendant or whatever they’re called these days) who asked to see our tickets. Yup, sure enough, Uncle Charlie and I were on the wrong side of the aisle!

Bwaaahaahaaa! It gets even better.

So, we moved to the other side of the aisle, and the lady who was seated there laughed hysterically at our situation and playfully told us that perhaps we needed to take a remedial alphabet class. Her sense of humor was great, and we were happy to have her as our seat companion. We started talking, and she was headed to Boston to see her son run in the Boston Marathon. Mrs. Rudy McRudenheimer kept scowling across the aisle at us because the three of us were laughing so much, and the plane hadn’t even taken off yet!

Finally, I reached into my bag and found my disguise nose glasses that Uncle Charlie and I were going to wear off the plane to surprise Sarah with. (I brought an extra pair for her, but since I didn’t really know her very well, I wasn’t sure if she’d fully appreciate them or not, so I gave Sarah’s pair to the lady that was with us.)

We decide to make a “secret signal” for if we saw each other around Beantown that weekend, which was to pinch our nose and nod (in case we didn’t have our disguises on). The three of us wore the disguise nose glasses for the entire flight.(Yes, really!) The stewardess started giving the speech about the available exits and spotted us while she was talking, then she started laughing so hard, she had to excuse herself. The three of us sat there stone-faced as we watched. A different stewardess came to finish the safety speech, saw us and started laughing as well. By then, the whole plane turned to look and was roaring with laughter… all except Mrs. Rudy McRudenheimer across the aisle. She shot us a nasty glare every time we looked over at her!

Three hours or so later, we arrived in Boston, and of course, all three of us still had on our nose glasses. We took a photo on the plane, and as you can see, Mrs. Rudy McRudenheimer is still back there scowling (see above). The stewardesses and pilot laughed hysterically as we exited, and nearly all of the people we encountered on our way down to the baggage claim laughed heartily as we proudly sported our nose glasses through Logan Airport.

Sarah never did get her nose, but I think the lady probably got a lot more use out of it than Sister Sarah ever would have.

Me and Sarah. I finally got to meet her. 🙂

So tell me: Do you have any siblings you’ve never met? Would you wear disguise nose glasses on a plane? Would you demand that someone get out of your seat or ask them politely? If you encountered someone wearing disguise nose glasses on a plane, would you laugh? Do you have nicknames for people based on their behaviors?